MANICHAEAN
12-12-2012, 04:34 AM
Merry Christmas Ms Roxas.
She looked pleased to see him and on his side, it was reciprocated.
Following the flight and booking into the Makarti Peninsular Hotel, he had foregone the quick shower as she said she was only ten minutes away. In fact they converged in the lobby and he spotted her coming through the main glass swing doors just as he was making his way to the reception desk to modify the registration. Big smile and an open, unashamed kiss of affection. In the background, swathes of Christmas lights covering the high walls, were a portent reminder of the annual rebirth of mans hope and continuity.
The desk clerk, both in appearance and demeanour, was of a standard that befitted the
quality of the hotel, aided no doubt by the five hundred peso tip he had been slipped earlier.
"I'd like to book a guest into my room for the night."
"Certainly sir. Can you just write her name on the register."
"No ID requested" he noted mentally whilst filling in the slip.
But then, there was no misconceived look of a professional about her. She was fresh and smart, apparently in love and still one hell of a looker. The last time they had met six months ago, she had looked worn from the travails of raising a young child for the first time. Now the weariness about the eyes had faded, leaving as it's heritage a new kind of beauty encompassed in a sharper profile and softer manner; remnants of furrows dug in virgin soil.
They decided first to go for a drink at the hotel bar, and he was pleasantly surprised when she ordered what was very much to his taste also. In reality it should not have tilted his balance so, for they had always been much alike in appetites and attitudes, whether physical or emotional. Perhaps that had been the blessing and the curse in their relationship over the years. They were both at core a little improbable; if that is feasible when one combines the attributes of being romantic and street-wise? They were consummate actors playing the part in an as yet unwritten drama, but nevertheless intuitively knowing the others' lines as it were. More important was being comfortable with it.
They sat on high stools, relaxed and catching up on what had passed. She asked how was" kuya "back in Papua New Guinea from where he had arrived, and they mutually laughed at the unstated, implicit conspiracy of their meeting. He filled her in on other acquaintances they knew from the past; where they were and what they were doing. She explained her plans to go to Singapore on a visitors visa and then try and get work from there, and he then felt the moment had come to ask her gently if she was ok with the situation between them as he saw her so little. But she said she was ok with it and smiled softly with a resignation of sadness born of reality.
There was then a period of silence when she looked away, and shaking her head with languid fervour said, "I am managing to exist in a wilderness, but I cannot drink from the fresh springs therein." Then she reengaged her look and remembered vividly the series of attentions paid to her by the first man she had ever been inclined to adore and it complicated her emotions indescribably. She had loved him partly because he was exceptional, partly because she had determined to love him, chiefly because she was in desperate need of loving somebody after wearying of a previous lover. There had been a time however when the self-assurance had not been there, a time when she felt the power of her face had been lost, the charm of her emotions all disguised, the fascinations
of her coquetry denied existence, and nothing but a voice left to her. He had supported her through that.
The mood changed abruptly and a low laugh escaped her- one of triumphant pleasure. She let her joyous Chinese eyes rest upon him without speaking, as if upon some wondrous thing she had previously created out of chaos."Yes, yes- I know it," she cried under her breath, as if reading his mind, and seizing the moment, she threw back her head so that the ceiling spot lights shone full upon her face and the august pillaring of her throat. Smilingly she said, "Have you seen anything better than that in your travels?"
She was not one to commit herself to such a position without good ground. He said quietly, "No." The revived embers of an old passion glowed clearly in him and he leant forward as if about to put his face towards her cheek, but she did not move. The awakening was almost feline in it's stealthiness.
In fact her appearance accorded well with this smouldering rebelliousness, and the dark splendour of her beauty was the real surface of the sometimes sad and stifled warmth within her. Though she was a girl of some forwardness of mind she was never fool enough to show every card. To her way of thinking, love is the dismallest thing where the lover is quite honest. "Don't you offer me tame love, or away you go," was her unwritten
creed.
She became aware once again of the strange power in his appearance. It lay in the fact that, though his whole figure was visible, the observer's eye was only aware of his face. It was really one of those faces which convey less the idea of so many years of age, than of so much experience as it's store. But there was an inner strenuousness preying upon an outer symmetry, for his countenance was overlaid with legible meanings. Without being thought worn he yet had certain marks derived from a perception of his surroundings, such as are not unfrequently found on men at the end of long years of endeavour. Mental luminousness must be fed with the sustenance of life, and the pitiful sight of two demands on one supply was just showing itself here in him.
There are a decreasing number of individuals, (and she was one of them), who feel that a man who lives without disturbing a feature, or setting a mark of mental concern anywhere upon himself, is too far removed from modern perceptiveness to be a modern type. Thus her eye was pleasingly arrested. Physically beautiful men - the glory of the race when it was young - are almost an anachronism now; and we may wonder whether, at some time or other, physically beautiful women may not be an anachronism likewise.
As he looked around he noted that, unlike on other trips, there was not much atmosphere in the bar. But then it was not the weekend when it constituted a fashionable watering hole for affluent Filipino business men and local expatriates, with their equally local girl
friends. Tonight it was dark and smoky, almost abandoned apart from a couple of over painted hostesses to the right drinking, strangely enough, what appeared to be expensive straight wiskeys.
Outside Manila strutted it stuff; an Asian capital city; impertinent and down to earth, affirming the aspects that suited it and tossing aside everything of which it was tired. And yet if one was present, there was not an option of choice. The only choice one had was to pay attention.
Up in the room, he had a shower, put on a robe and lay on the bed watching "Desperate Housewives." She spent what seemed like years preparing herself, and then emerged.One point was evident in this; that she had been existing in a suppressed state, and not in one of languor, or stagnation.She spoke faintly to him as she slipped into the bed and her breathing was quick. She had as yet advanced to the secret recesses of sensuousness, but had still to cross the threshold of conventionality.
He started to playfully pull her top off with his teeth and she laughed nervously. So he put off the lights. Token resistance and short gasps from her even as the negligee came off and a cry of abandoned finality as the pants were slid clear. She was moaning before he even really touched her and the kissing of the inside of her thighs had her contorting her upper body on a sweet rack of emotion. There was a fearful joy as he commenced in earnest and she was loud, very loud, as he proceeded further; a breached river of
anticipation and shock, unmitigated under the remorseless advance to the final precipice. He worked her rythmetically and systematically and despite her holding a pillow over her face to help suppress her cry's, the momentum continued unabated.
When the initial session was finished, she was both gasping and laughing, like someone who has breathlessly and with fortitude, survived the mother of all coaster rides at the fun fare.
In the subsequent movement she seemed more under control, knowing perhaps more cogently what to expect. Nevertheless, there were still those variations on a theme that he was intent on, as he cupped his hands under her rear and drew her to him. Likewise
he worked first one and then the other supple leg aside, and then insisted almost brusquely, on her placing her hands behind her head; for there has existed throughout the ages, equipoise aspects of dominance and submission, implicit and integral to the execution of this most human of endeavours. Resistance was by now weakening on her part, as she willingly or otherwise, swam or drifted further into the deeper waters and unchartered currents of female emotions. Reluctant at first to open up her thighs, she eventually succumbed and his tongue worked remorselessly the gateway to heaven.
It was a strange night after that, for though he touched her from time to time, she was still and finished, neither moving nor responding. On the bedroom field of battle, vestiges of clothing lay abandoned and sated was nocturnal fervour. In its place a quiet glade of
peace where he could feel the warmth and freshness and nearness of her body. Her face and shoulders were visible against the whiteness of the womb-like sheets around her and she moved not. She was like a child.
He was up at four thirty to catch the next flight and saying goodbye was poignant . He realised once again how so much alike they were and he kissed her tenderly. She sat upright, still drowsy, holding the sheets chastely to her front and his hands around her naked, warm back. He knew there was a fragility in this woman that fascinated him. That, combined with an independence of spirit that kept him captive.
Set inwardly pulsing by the parting words he spoke, she lifted her long-lashed eyelids to
view his face in a manner, as if to lift them were a work requiring consideration. A final silence lay between them and it was almost as a revelation that they found they could reach each other by a magnetism which was as superior to words as words are to silence.
As he left, she stretched her neck forward till she caught a final glimpse of a receding back and shoulders; and she felt a wretched twinge of misery, she knew not why. It was the sickening feeling which, if the changed heart has any generosity at all in it's composition, accompanies the sudden sight of a once-loved one who is beloved no more.
She left the hotel much later that morning, a little figure walking and diminishing into the streets of Manila - a pale-blue top and jeans in a vast canyon of neutral concrete office
blocks, a figure solitary and undefended except by the power of her own hope.
At the airport he sat, his face still flushed and his eye bright. What the terminal light did not show was something which lingered upon his lips like a seal set there. The abiding presence of this impress was so real.
She looked pleased to see him and on his side, it was reciprocated.
Following the flight and booking into the Makarti Peninsular Hotel, he had foregone the quick shower as she said she was only ten minutes away. In fact they converged in the lobby and he spotted her coming through the main glass swing doors just as he was making his way to the reception desk to modify the registration. Big smile and an open, unashamed kiss of affection. In the background, swathes of Christmas lights covering the high walls, were a portent reminder of the annual rebirth of mans hope and continuity.
The desk clerk, both in appearance and demeanour, was of a standard that befitted the
quality of the hotel, aided no doubt by the five hundred peso tip he had been slipped earlier.
"I'd like to book a guest into my room for the night."
"Certainly sir. Can you just write her name on the register."
"No ID requested" he noted mentally whilst filling in the slip.
But then, there was no misconceived look of a professional about her. She was fresh and smart, apparently in love and still one hell of a looker. The last time they had met six months ago, she had looked worn from the travails of raising a young child for the first time. Now the weariness about the eyes had faded, leaving as it's heritage a new kind of beauty encompassed in a sharper profile and softer manner; remnants of furrows dug in virgin soil.
They decided first to go for a drink at the hotel bar, and he was pleasantly surprised when she ordered what was very much to his taste also. In reality it should not have tilted his balance so, for they had always been much alike in appetites and attitudes, whether physical or emotional. Perhaps that had been the blessing and the curse in their relationship over the years. They were both at core a little improbable; if that is feasible when one combines the attributes of being romantic and street-wise? They were consummate actors playing the part in an as yet unwritten drama, but nevertheless intuitively knowing the others' lines as it were. More important was being comfortable with it.
They sat on high stools, relaxed and catching up on what had passed. She asked how was" kuya "back in Papua New Guinea from where he had arrived, and they mutually laughed at the unstated, implicit conspiracy of their meeting. He filled her in on other acquaintances they knew from the past; where they were and what they were doing. She explained her plans to go to Singapore on a visitors visa and then try and get work from there, and he then felt the moment had come to ask her gently if she was ok with the situation between them as he saw her so little. But she said she was ok with it and smiled softly with a resignation of sadness born of reality.
There was then a period of silence when she looked away, and shaking her head with languid fervour said, "I am managing to exist in a wilderness, but I cannot drink from the fresh springs therein." Then she reengaged her look and remembered vividly the series of attentions paid to her by the first man she had ever been inclined to adore and it complicated her emotions indescribably. She had loved him partly because he was exceptional, partly because she had determined to love him, chiefly because she was in desperate need of loving somebody after wearying of a previous lover. There had been a time however when the self-assurance had not been there, a time when she felt the power of her face had been lost, the charm of her emotions all disguised, the fascinations
of her coquetry denied existence, and nothing but a voice left to her. He had supported her through that.
The mood changed abruptly and a low laugh escaped her- one of triumphant pleasure. She let her joyous Chinese eyes rest upon him without speaking, as if upon some wondrous thing she had previously created out of chaos."Yes, yes- I know it," she cried under her breath, as if reading his mind, and seizing the moment, she threw back her head so that the ceiling spot lights shone full upon her face and the august pillaring of her throat. Smilingly she said, "Have you seen anything better than that in your travels?"
She was not one to commit herself to such a position without good ground. He said quietly, "No." The revived embers of an old passion glowed clearly in him and he leant forward as if about to put his face towards her cheek, but she did not move. The awakening was almost feline in it's stealthiness.
In fact her appearance accorded well with this smouldering rebelliousness, and the dark splendour of her beauty was the real surface of the sometimes sad and stifled warmth within her. Though she was a girl of some forwardness of mind she was never fool enough to show every card. To her way of thinking, love is the dismallest thing where the lover is quite honest. "Don't you offer me tame love, or away you go," was her unwritten
creed.
She became aware once again of the strange power in his appearance. It lay in the fact that, though his whole figure was visible, the observer's eye was only aware of his face. It was really one of those faces which convey less the idea of so many years of age, than of so much experience as it's store. But there was an inner strenuousness preying upon an outer symmetry, for his countenance was overlaid with legible meanings. Without being thought worn he yet had certain marks derived from a perception of his surroundings, such as are not unfrequently found on men at the end of long years of endeavour. Mental luminousness must be fed with the sustenance of life, and the pitiful sight of two demands on one supply was just showing itself here in him.
There are a decreasing number of individuals, (and she was one of them), who feel that a man who lives without disturbing a feature, or setting a mark of mental concern anywhere upon himself, is too far removed from modern perceptiveness to be a modern type. Thus her eye was pleasingly arrested. Physically beautiful men - the glory of the race when it was young - are almost an anachronism now; and we may wonder whether, at some time or other, physically beautiful women may not be an anachronism likewise.
As he looked around he noted that, unlike on other trips, there was not much atmosphere in the bar. But then it was not the weekend when it constituted a fashionable watering hole for affluent Filipino business men and local expatriates, with their equally local girl
friends. Tonight it was dark and smoky, almost abandoned apart from a couple of over painted hostesses to the right drinking, strangely enough, what appeared to be expensive straight wiskeys.
Outside Manila strutted it stuff; an Asian capital city; impertinent and down to earth, affirming the aspects that suited it and tossing aside everything of which it was tired. And yet if one was present, there was not an option of choice. The only choice one had was to pay attention.
Up in the room, he had a shower, put on a robe and lay on the bed watching "Desperate Housewives." She spent what seemed like years preparing herself, and then emerged.One point was evident in this; that she had been existing in a suppressed state, and not in one of languor, or stagnation.She spoke faintly to him as she slipped into the bed and her breathing was quick. She had as yet advanced to the secret recesses of sensuousness, but had still to cross the threshold of conventionality.
He started to playfully pull her top off with his teeth and she laughed nervously. So he put off the lights. Token resistance and short gasps from her even as the negligee came off and a cry of abandoned finality as the pants were slid clear. She was moaning before he even really touched her and the kissing of the inside of her thighs had her contorting her upper body on a sweet rack of emotion. There was a fearful joy as he commenced in earnest and she was loud, very loud, as he proceeded further; a breached river of
anticipation and shock, unmitigated under the remorseless advance to the final precipice. He worked her rythmetically and systematically and despite her holding a pillow over her face to help suppress her cry's, the momentum continued unabated.
When the initial session was finished, she was both gasping and laughing, like someone who has breathlessly and with fortitude, survived the mother of all coaster rides at the fun fare.
In the subsequent movement she seemed more under control, knowing perhaps more cogently what to expect. Nevertheless, there were still those variations on a theme that he was intent on, as he cupped his hands under her rear and drew her to him. Likewise
he worked first one and then the other supple leg aside, and then insisted almost brusquely, on her placing her hands behind her head; for there has existed throughout the ages, equipoise aspects of dominance and submission, implicit and integral to the execution of this most human of endeavours. Resistance was by now weakening on her part, as she willingly or otherwise, swam or drifted further into the deeper waters and unchartered currents of female emotions. Reluctant at first to open up her thighs, she eventually succumbed and his tongue worked remorselessly the gateway to heaven.
It was a strange night after that, for though he touched her from time to time, she was still and finished, neither moving nor responding. On the bedroom field of battle, vestiges of clothing lay abandoned and sated was nocturnal fervour. In its place a quiet glade of
peace where he could feel the warmth and freshness and nearness of her body. Her face and shoulders were visible against the whiteness of the womb-like sheets around her and she moved not. She was like a child.
He was up at four thirty to catch the next flight and saying goodbye was poignant . He realised once again how so much alike they were and he kissed her tenderly. She sat upright, still drowsy, holding the sheets chastely to her front and his hands around her naked, warm back. He knew there was a fragility in this woman that fascinated him. That, combined with an independence of spirit that kept him captive.
Set inwardly pulsing by the parting words he spoke, she lifted her long-lashed eyelids to
view his face in a manner, as if to lift them were a work requiring consideration. A final silence lay between them and it was almost as a revelation that they found they could reach each other by a magnetism which was as superior to words as words are to silence.
As he left, she stretched her neck forward till she caught a final glimpse of a receding back and shoulders; and she felt a wretched twinge of misery, she knew not why. It was the sickening feeling which, if the changed heart has any generosity at all in it's composition, accompanies the sudden sight of a once-loved one who is beloved no more.
She left the hotel much later that morning, a little figure walking and diminishing into the streets of Manila - a pale-blue top and jeans in a vast canyon of neutral concrete office
blocks, a figure solitary and undefended except by the power of her own hope.
At the airport he sat, his face still flushed and his eye bright. What the terminal light did not show was something which lingered upon his lips like a seal set there. The abiding presence of this impress was so real.